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When they're all the same . . . (Score: 2, Insightful)

The more Firefox is the same as all the other browsers the less reason there will be to use Firefox specifically. I use certain plugins that are essential for my browsing requirements and work-flow. Many of these will likely cease to exist:

While it will be nice to have more supported and up-to-date plug-ins, I believe that the cost is too high for the value gained - especially since most plug-ins for the masses that this will facilitate aren't plug-ins that are desirable unless you're one of the sheep.

Re: When they're all the same . . . (Score: 1)

I barely use Firefox or one of its forks without first installing Adblock Plus, NoScript, RequestPolicy, Cookie Monster, and HTTPS Everywhere. The loss of any of these would make me reconsider updating to a version where these were broken. I have also recently been happy with customizing the Firefox UI with Stylish and with the additional features provided by HackTheWeb and Vimperator. While alternatives may exist in the Chrome world, switching away from Firefox to retain already present functionality seems irritating at best.

Re: When they're all the same . . . (Score: 0)

While I hope that firefox remains a bastion of experimentation, there is also vivaldi now. Which is carrying the opera torch for crazy UI experiments. And really most of the best browser UI ideas started with opera.

Re: When they're all the same . . . (Score: 2, Interesting)

Opera had some good ideas, but they usually managed to do them entirely the wrong way. Meanwhile, Firefox might have borrowed some rough concepts, but they fixed them in the process, so they were actually useful. Look back to when Firefox added tabbed browsing, and shortly after, Opera soon after added a second, entirely different method of tabs you could choose to use instead...

Some goes for the notification bar. It was taken from IE, but it didn't do much of anything useful there. After that, IE copied back the improved design from Firefox.

Unfortunately, their more recent changes (wholesale copying Chrome's UI) have been downhill all the way.

Plus, after Google banished all ad-blockers from the Play Store, Firefox became the only Android browser to take a stand and keep their ad blocking features, while all others cowered and dropped the feature. Ironically, mobile is where ad blocking is the most beneficial, and now it's the hardest place to do it. It's also one of just a few that allow you to change the built-in search engine to something other than Google.